"No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten." ―Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hank Fitzpatrick's life is what you might expect from a manchild stumbling his way from his teens to his thirties in small town Indiana: hypersexual, drunk, stoned, prone to fits of spontaneous masturbation, occasionally Catholic, and accidentally well-intentioned. Caught in the crossfire of raging hormones, bad decisions and family tragedy, Hank is just a boy not yet ready to be a man. BUY THE TICKET, TAKE THE RIDE is a roman à clef rooted in Brian Sweany's own tragicomic life, from his childhood growing up in southern Indiana to his early adult years working in New York publishing. And if that's not your thing, you can at least stay for the 80s music, or else the cameos by Johnny Depp, Woody Harrelson, and Kool and the Gang.